In Remembrance
by SydneyLouWho
Summary: As Katniss reopens every wound, one by one, story by story, until darkness falls on the Capitol, she feels as though she can breathe again. A short oneshot revolving around a mother and her daughter.


**Written for the Caesar's Palace monthly oneshot contest. The prompt was "_lost"_ (sorry about my loose interpreration of the prompt, this fic kinda evolved as I was writing it).**

**Beta credit to Johanna (turtledoves), who gives absolutely wonderful advice.**

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A little girl stands alone, looking up at the tall marble structure that stands before her.

_In Remembrance_, the top reads, and below it is a list, which she finds to be names. _Remembrance_. The word lingers in her mind. What is she supposed to remember?

With nothing else to do, she begins to count the names.

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It seems more like fate than a coincidence that the little girl, on her first trip to the city, has found this monument, but it was purely accidental. She had merely lost her way. Aster had been with her mother and father, who had been called to the Capitol for something important, but she had strayed from them when her mother was reprimanding her brother. Wandering without aim, she found the large marble structure.

She doesn't think of her mother, really, as she stands there; her mother always finds her when she's lost. It's a talent of hers. Katniss always knows where her Aster is going, even before she does. It could either be maternal instinct or the instinct of a hunter, Aster is not sure.

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_1,743_. 1,743 names are engraved on the stone in front of her, but what do they mean?

"It's sad, isn't it?" a voice emerges from behind the little girl. She turns around to see her mother standing there, eyes sad. "I've heard about this monument, but I haven't ever seen it in person until now."

"What does it mean?"

Katniss' face drops slightly, as if she's in pain. "These are the names of those who died in the Hunger Games."

The Hunger Games isn't an unfamiliar concept to Aster; her father had explained it once, although she was too young to understand at the time. She knows that it was terrible and that many had died in the games, and many in the war to end the games. She also knows that her parents were involved.

"I knew a few of them," Katniss explains, her voice sad, "It was terrible, watching kids your age kill each other to survive." Aster notices how her mother stumbles on the word '_watch'_.

"Were you in the games, Mommy?"

Katniss grimaces. She had danced around the subject before, letting her daughter know that she'd been involved in the rebellion, but not stating outright that she'd been in the games; she doesn't want her children to see her as a monster. "Yes, your father and I were in the games, a long time ago."

Aster ponders this. "Did you ... kill anyone?" she asks quietly. She thinks she knows the answer to her own question, or at least she hopes she does. Her mother is too kind to have killed anyone, although she is tough and strong, or was tough and strong, from the stories she's heard. Aster has only seen the softer, weaker side of Katniss, rather than the one who would break laws and hunt in the forest, who fed her whole family when her father died. But, still, she wonders about the past that her mother tries her hardest not to talk about.

Katniss can't lie to her daughter, who stands before her so innocent and only seeking truth, unaware of the pain she has resurfaced. "Yes," she says softly. She feels as though old wounds are being reopened, tearing slightly where they once gaped, but the tears don't come; she's been numb for years.

Aster stands still, staring, trying to gather her thoughts so that she can decipher her emotions. "Why?"

"I wanted to survive. I needed to survive. It was the only way, at the time. I had to survive for my sister and mother. They needed me." Her eyes drop to the ground, likely remembering that her sister and mother no longer need her. She breathes deeply and slowly. "I didn't want to kill anyone, Aster, but it still haunts me that I did."

Suddenly it all becomes clear. Her mother's brokenness, her fragility, are all a product of the games and of killing. The nightmares that leave her screaming are flashbacks of her youth.

Aster is most bothered, not by the fact that her mother admitted to murder, because she knows that she would kill so that her younger brother could live if there was no other choice, but by the fact that these people whose names are engraved on the memorial are faceless, and that she doesn't know what they were like. These children suffered brutal deaths at the hands of their peers, and yet all they are given is their name carved in stone and the words in remembrance. What is she supposed to remember about them, when all she knows is their names?

"Tell me about them," she says quietly. "The ones that you knew, I mean."

Her mother exhales, relieved by the fact that her daughter doesn't seem to hate her for her actions, but fearful of her daughter's question. She doesn't want to rip the old wounds any further, but Aster has a curious, innocent look on her face that she really can't refuse.

"Rue," she says slowly, pointing to a name near the end of the list. "Rue was your age. She was my friend, a sweet girl from District 11 who deserved more than the end that she had." The name Rue sounds familiar. Aster had been told that she'd almost been named Rue, after an old friend, but that they'd chosen to give her a unique name because to name her after someone who had died would be a constant reminder of the pain that's attached to that name. Aster understands now. Her parents were afraid that the memories that are connected to the name would resurface all of the emotions that came with them.

The words come fluidly, as if they've been waiting on Katniss' tongue for years. Words about a boy who spared her life although he shouldn't have, about an old woman disappearing into the fog, and about a morphling dying in Peeta's arms, under a breathtaking sky.

Katniss tells her stories, one by one, although most of the dead tributes were still strangers to her by the time of their deaths. She also spoke of the rebellion, for the first time since it occurred. Aster meets young people with names like Rue and Foxface and Finnick, people who kept their youth forever.

As Katniss reopens every wound, one by one, story by story, until darkness falls on the Capitol, she feels as though she can breathe again. Speaking about these people doesn't set her free from her memories of them, but lifts the weight a bit. The pile of corpses that laid upon her heart and mind seems a bit lighter.

Her daughter getting lost led Katniss to more closure than she could've possibly asked for, although it isn't anywhere near resolution.

The final story is one that she'd suppressed for a long, long time. She tells of the little blonde-haired girl whose smile lit up the room, and who deserved so much more than her short life. She tells of her growth from little duckling to a girl who was willing to give her life to help the wounded, and she tells of the death of the little cat-loving angel who took her rightful place in the sky far too soon.

Katniss reaches up to touch one of Aster's two braided pigtails as she speaks, worn the same way that the young Primrose Everdeen had once worn her hair.

Aster feels as though she knew them like her mother did as she paints pictures in her mind of the way they looked. And the words, _in remembrance_, take a new meaning in her young mind.

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**Thanks for reading! Reviews are much appreciated.**


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